Category: Politics
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A More Perfect Union: Obama and Transracialism
Barack Obama’s speech last week was the most inspiring speech I’ve seen by a U.S. president – or a major U.S. presidential candidate – in my adult life. I’ve seen video footage of inspiring speeches by Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy, and a number of other inspiring speeches by earlier presidents…
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The Onion on Voting, Puppetry and Illusions
A week ago, The Onion produced a hilarious – not to be confused with Hillaryous – satirical look at the upcoming "election", from the shadowy perspective of reports of Diebold voting machine hacks in Florida a month ago … or perhaps demonstrations of Diebold voting machine hackability a year ago … or perhaps questionable results…
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Blessed Unrest: Environmental and Social Justice for All … or Bust!
In his latest book (and video), environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author Paul Hawken achieves a remarkable balance between breadth and depth in arguing that in order to restore environmental and social balance on this earth, we must strive for both, or we will achieve neither. Noting that "we are nature", and thus however we treat…
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Seeing What I Want To See: Whale Watching … and WMD
Near the start our recent family vacation along the Oregon coast, we walked up Cannon Beach into the downtown area. During our northerlywalk, we passed several groups of people on the beach who appeared to be deeply engrossed in something to the southwest. I have trained myself, over the years, to ignore spectacles, as to…
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Absolution Power Corrupts Absolutely
I was listening to a story on CounterSpin where David Cole, Georgetown law professor and author of an article in Salon on “Bush’s torture ban is full of loopholes”, was talking about the executive order recently signed by U.S. President George W. Bush. Cole noted that one of the less noticed provisions of the document…
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Standing on Boxes: Signaling Costs and Benefits in Online and Offline Social Networks (Judith Donath at C&T 2007)
The highlight of the recent Communities and Technologies Conference (C&T 2007) – for me – was Judith Donath‘s keynote on "Agents and Faces: The Reliability of Online Signals" (based on her course – and forthcoming book – on Signals, Truth and Design). I’d posted a relatively tiny summary of an abbreviated glimpse she’d offered in…
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Microsoft: The Republican Party of the Technology World?
My children sometimes ask me to explain the difference between Republicans and Democrats (especially during election season). While I admit that sometimes I can’t tell the difference myself, I generally simplify by saying that Republicans trust business to do the right thing, but don’t trust individuals to do the right thing, while Democrats don’t trust…
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The Beginning of the End of America
Keith Olbermann is my hero. In a scathing commentary on George W. Bush’s recent signing of the Military Commissions Act, Keith takes the president to task, comparing him and this act to earlier presidents and similar actions that gave them the authority to ignore and abuse the constitutional rights of our citizens: John Adams’ Alien…
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1984, Big Brotherhood, Hierarchies, Power and the American Way
I just finished re-reading 1984 (the Centennial Edition), by George Orwell, and as he himself says The best books are those that tell you what you already know. 1984 depicts a dystopian future wherein three superstates — Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia — are engaged perpetual warfare, which is used to maintain the poverty and ignorance…
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Keith Olbermann on George Bush and George Orwell
Recent developments in global geopolitics have been reminding me of George Orwell‘s book, 1984. I read the book in high school, and decided to buy a new copy and re-read it to refresh my memory of the dystopian future laid out in the book … signs of which are increasingly apparent today. The book depicts…